hsbc will pay fines totaling $1.9 billion. it also will beef up its monitoring of suspicious financial activity. in august, a different british bank, standard chartered, paid $340 million to new york state, settling claims it laundered hundreds of billions of dollars for iran. sarah jane hughes is a law professor at indiana university. she joins us from bloomington. >> tom: professor, does this punishment for hsbc fit the crime? >> well, the parties clearly think that it does. >> tom: at $2 billion almost, it is cerinly gnificant largerthan the standard charter settlement from earlier this year. why the big difference? >> the duration, the number of individual violations, the number of countries involved, the fact that mexico is also involved. many factors. >> tom: let's talk about the global nature of this. to put it frankly, is money laundering a business model for global banking? >> well, money laundering is certainly a business model. and the united states has sent clear signals this year and before that it does not want i